Merriam-Webster's top word of 2020 not a shocker: pandemic - The Associated Press

“Often the big news story has a technical word that’s associated with it and in this case, the word pandemic is not just technical but has become general.

It’s probably the word by which we’ll refer to this period in the future,” he said.

The word took on urgent specificity in March, when the coronavirus crisis was designated a pandemic, but it started to trend up on Merriam-Webster.com as early January and again in February when the first U.S.

Site interest for the word has remained significantly high through the year, Sokolowski said.

By huge, Sokolowski means searches for pandemic on March 11 were 115,806% higher than lookups experienced on the same date last year.

The word pandemic dates to the mid-1600s, used broadly for “universal” and more specifically to disease in a medical text in the 1660s, he said.

Coronavirus was among runners up for word of the year as it jumped into the mainstream.